April's News You Can Use: What's needed until and when schools reopen

April 28, 2020

Forty-three states, including Illinois, have closed K-12 schools for the remainder of the year. Mass closures and a sudden switch to crisis schooling from a distance have prompted reflections on the crucial role of schools for children and communities. It’s also prompted speculation about what changes might take place longer term as a result of the closings and the pandemic.

Standardized Testing: The closures have resulted in at least one positive thing this year: the cancellation of annual standardized testing mandated by the federal government. Annual standardized testing is a uniquely American education policy, and costly in terms of both time and money.

Tech and Privacy: Online technology is central to most schools’ strategies for continuing the school year during closures. As a result, existing student data privacy concerns about education technology have ballooned, particularly with the use of online video-conferencing tools. Read our explainer on videoconferencing and student privacy here.

Parents should know that the requirements of laws and regulations to protect student privacy have not been waived during school closures and remote learning. Note that any recordings of online instruction that include a student’s personally identifiable information, including their image or voice, are part of a student’s educational record. That means parents can request access to the recordings and that schools must protect them from inappropriate disclosures.

In addition, if your child is under 13, you likely have the right to have such recordings deleted by the tech vendor storing them. Requiring children to participate in video discussions, recorded or not, is especially problematic for families whose well-being is directly threatened by lack of privacy, e.g. families with undocumented members or domestic violence survivors; this is yet another equity issue with online learning.

What you can do now:We’d like to know how schooling during closures is going for families, especially with respect to tech usage. You can complete our short survey here.

When schools open again

This has been a tumultuous spring for public schools. By fall, the pandemic’s effect on schools will not just be felt as closures in place now (or possibly again) or attempts to implement social distancing in school facilities not designed for it. It will also have a severely negative fiscal impact on local and state budgets—the source of most of our schools’ funding.

The combination of looming austerity and a likely ongoing need for social distancing makes it tempting for anyone with an ideological or a financial interest in online learning to push for such methods as permanent policy, not just a temporary measure. In fact, US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is using the CARES funding as a way to promote privatization via both online schools and voucher payments to families.

Supporting Illinois Families for Public Schools' advocacy

We are so grateful for the continued support of our monthly donors during this time! Before the pandemic, we had planned to hold our annual fundraiser as an event in May. We will be rescheduling for the summer, but it remains likely that it will need to be a virtual fundraiser even then. If you’d like to make a contribution, you can donate here.